12 months ago, Scott Pruett, Memo Rojas, and the entire Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates Daytona Prototype team were licking their wounds after losing out on the Grand-Am Rolex Series DP championship by just 13 points. Entering this weekend’s TUDOR United SportsCar Championship race at Circuit of The Americas, the proud team sits a distant fifth in points and has little chance of earning its sixth sports car title since 2004.

The move from the proven Riley-BMW DP package to the new twin-turbo V6 Ford EcoBoost powerplant and bodywork delivered two wins from the first three TUDOR Championship races, including the prestigious 12 Hours of Sebring, but a frustrating middle portion of the season has the No. 01 Riley-Ford DP team in the unfamiliar position.

“There’s no question about it – it feels weird – because we always expect to be right in the thick of the championship at this stage,” Pruett told RACER. “We knew this would be a transition year on so many levels with IMSA, and we also felt that because of all those changes it was also the perfect opportunity if we were going to make a change on the manufacturer side.

“This was always going to be a learning year for us with the EcoBoost twin-turbo V6, and we’ve been going through a lot of development. Some of the issues have been not engine related stuff that put us out of some races. So that’s certainly a different place for us to be living and that puts you in the position of just focus on trying to win the last two races and prepare for a title run next year.”

Pruett says the Ford DP platform, which is also used by the Michael Shank Racing team, has shown promise at recent rounds and has everyone in the Blue Oval camp feeling confident heading into COTA.

“If you look at Elkhart Lake, the result that you see for the finish certainly does not show how we ran,” he noted. “We ran a lot of that race because of all the yellows and because of the way the yellows fell for us, we ended up getting shuffled back only because of pit stops. It does happen, but it didn’t show the fact that we were right at the front for most all the race. Coming off a second-place at Indianapolis, Ford and Roush-Yates continue to work hard to try and come up with new things. So I think it’s very realistic that we can come back for the last two races and run at the front and see if we can come away with a couple of victories.”

With IndyCar Race Director Beaux Barfield leaving his post to return to IMSA, Pruett’s name has popped up again as a possible replacement. Fans of the 54-year-old Californian will be happy to learn he has no intention of hanging up his helmet, much less taking on a new role in one of the least popular jobs in motor racing.

“I still have my head down, at least for a few more years,” he confirmed. “I still love what I’m doing and I’m not looking to get out of the car, most certainly, for next year. Being in Race Control, it just ends up being too much of a babysitting job. And a lot of hassle. You’re wrong if you do and wrong if you don’t. Some love you, some hate you. It’s one of those where you’ve got to have the right personality and you’ve got to want that job. You’ve got to want that job to do it right because every weekend it’s tough and some weekends it’s even tougher. It’s not for me.”